post-enlightenment

Friday, November 12, 2010

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"
Gordon Lightfoot: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

"The answer is that it does not go anywhere, even if we in our mortal fear cannot see it.""It's everywhere, in every place, at all times, throughout eternity."
Rev. Richard Ingalls. Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.

Spine tingling stuff.
As a former single-handed sailor, far out upon the ocean, I know more than any man should, about waves turning the minutes to hours. And the feeling of imminent doom. And the reality of ecstasy obtained by moving the mind fractionally, to view reality in a different light.

The second bold-italic line, above, by Rev. Ingalls, is almost exactly the same description I use for the experience of an enlightened state. Except where he describes this as "The Love of God". I describe it as what I became, in that enlightened state:

Everything. Everywhere. Always.

Perhaps that is what enlightenment is:
To Become The Love of God.

And that is what is to come.
We are not meant to linger there, while physically alive.
Only, perhaps, to glimpse it.
That is why the enlightened return, enlightened and changed.
Some may choose, then, to wander off and become hermits.
I really can't say I blame them.

Jesus had a tough time of it.
After forty days and forty nights, all alone in the desert, he passed through the needle's eye and became everything, everywhere, always. He realized he was God, and so became God, and he beheld his creation, and decided it was good.

Understandably, he was keen to share this new knowledge, and save everyone from their dreary lives of unknowing. He didn't once think: "Everyone will be really impressed with the new, enlightened me!"
No.
Although his enlightenment was a wonder, and as good as it gets for anyone living a mortal life, he realized, as part of this process, that not-doing, was rather useless without the doing.
Being as how he was Jesus, he forsook his own pleasure, and withdrew from heaven, to set about freely handing this amazing revelation to others.
With - in retrospect - entirely predictable results...

Off he trotted, back into the world of men. Filled with enthusiasm and motivation. He knew what was what.
He couldn't wait to begin. And this is why he did not linger in the ecstasy of enlightenment, which is the realm of not-doing. He knew what he must do. Carpentry paled into insignificance, compared to the importance of saving the world. He had new knowledge, and was hot to share it.

He entered the local temple, and saw through new eyes, the corruption, the pettiness and the ugliness that people did, and still do, specialize in, and threw a fit. Turning over tables, jumping up and down in fury. Giving everyone, no doubt, a real mouthful.

Nobody understood.
Nobody could see that Jesus was perfectly justified in his behavior, given what he knew.
But knowing what he knew, and being the Saviour, he just couldn't help himself.
It was the beginning of the end, even as it began.
People do not want to know how awful they are, or how dishonest, or how self-immersed. Let alone be reminded of how much they do not know.
No.
They would far rather crucify those that do.